


Locked with a Twisted Key

by the_rck



Series: Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion [6]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Multi, Murder, Reaping What You Sow, Role Reversal, Supervillains, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 15:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15643317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Twelve years after Homecoming, killing Warren's father serves as the opening move in a much bigger game. In the immediate aftermath, Zach talks to Barron Battle's lieutenant, and she starts to understand how very dangerous Warren's former sidekicks are.“At this point, you wouldn’t manage to touch her at all.” Zach made the words a warning rather than a threat.Windy eyed him appraisingly. “And if I take you hostage?”Zach was almost certain that she wasn’t really considering it. Even so, he bared his teeth in an unfriendly smile. “I don’t recommend it. Really don’t. Layla’ll probably let you go completely without that. You threaten any of us, and she won’t let you go, won’t even let you die.” He took a deep breath. “Partly because she’ll be pissed, but partly because we need to make an unsubtle point about consequences. It just doesn’t have to be you.”





	Locked with a Twisted Key

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hilda Conkling's "Three Loves."
> 
> Thanks to Elizabeth_Culmer for beta reading.
> 
> There's no onscreen sexual interaction in this story. It's just that this is dark-- Warren's reaping what he sowed.
> 
> Wendy "Windy" Endicott first turned up in "Drilled Through Empty Spaces," in the chapter titled "Zach 2: The Breath of Intervention." Her superpowers involve manipulating the flow of air.
> 
> Maureen first turned up in "Who Have Waited for Water." She's Warren's much younger half-sister, the daughter of Barron Battle and Gwen Grayson born a couple of years after Warren's mother died. Warren and his sidekicks persuaded/pressured Gwen to let the baby move to Sky High for safety. She's five to six years younger than the Homecoming kids are, young enough not to have been sleeping through the night reliably during "Who Have Waited for Water."
> 
> This diverges somewhere around "Who Have Waited for Water" in as much as Layla's father never came to Sky High. I don't know if he died of having the wall fall on him or if he avoided injury entirely and never knew he'd missed an opportunity. It might matter if I write further in this branch, but it also might not.

**12 November 2017**

Like Stitches, Warren’s father died of a stroke while visiting Sky High. Unlike with Stitches, an autopsy would have shown no signs of any foreign substances causing the stroke. Not that there was an autopsy, just that it really was a stroke.

Layla had considerably more control now than she’d had when she’d killed Stitches. That had taken poison; this was just a matter of tweaking some cells.

Barron Battle arrived, drank from the flask he’d brought with him, complained of a sudden headache, and collapsed. The flask hadn’t contained poison. Battle’s own people checked that.

Zach was glad that Layla had taken care of it before Warren’s father had touched the meal Zach had prepared. Likely nobody would have assumed that Zach had done something that suicidal, but common sense wasn’t a prerequisite for being part of Barron Battle’s retinue.

Most of the people Battle had brought with him turned to Warren for instructions, offering him their loyalty. Zach wasn’t surprised to realize that Windy Endicott was missing.

She was sharper than the usual run of minions and powerful enough for escape to be possible if he gave her time to think things through. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill the people between her and the buses once she realized that she needed a bus.

Zach caught up with her at the northern end of the island, well away from the buses. If she’d truly been able to fly, she’d have escaped already, but the field in place to keep toddlers from falling off the edge had stopped her.

“You’d have been better off stealing a bus,” he said once he was close enough for her to hear.

She gave him a sharp look, and he raised his hands to show that they were empty.

Of course, Layla’s hands had been empty each time she’d killed.

“Not,” Zach went on, “that leaving Sky High would help. Not when you don’t know what you’re trying to hide from.” He considered. “You… I wouldn’t say you were kind to me, but you could have been so much worse. A lot of people would have been, just for shits and giggles.”

“Warren wasn’t surprised,” Windy said. “Not one of the five of you was.”

“I doubt anyone else noticed.” Part of Zach wanted her as scared as she’d made him that first meeting. The rest of him knew that, if Layla wasn’t paying attention, Windy might actually be able to hurt him. He hadn’t told Layla that he was leaving or that he’d guessed that Windy might be a problem. “We will kill, but only if we have to.”

Windy frowned. “Royal we?” She shook her head minutely as she discarded that. “It’s one of the others, isn’t it? Not Magenta.”

He saw the moment she understood. 

“Oh, fuck me sideways. How did I miss that? Gaia’s daughter.” Her shoulders sagged.

“Even Warren wanted you to miss it,” Zach said. “I thought she was overplaying it when I introduced you that day you and Warren’s father first visited, but I’d been locked in the girls’ locker room with her for months, so I--” He shrugged. “I could tell when she was acting. She could have killed you then, that first time. It’d have been a nasty fight, and you’d have hurt her and probably killed me, but you’d have died. What happened after that would have depended on whether any of the babies got hurt and on whether Ethan wanted to talk Layla down.”

Magenta could have and probably would have, but she hadn’t been there. Ethan… The April after Homecoming, Ethan had very badly wanted a way out. Ethan could have talked Layla down. As to whether he would have right then... It was a coin flip as to which way Ethan would have jumped if Layla’d been willing to go to war in 2006. If Zach had died, the coin would have been weighted heavily toward violence.

And, really, everyone Zach cared about would have been better off fighting once their cover was broken. He’d have gone that direction, too, if it had come to rebellion then. It hadn’t, and twelve years later, Layla’s powers reached farther.

They weren’t rebelling; they were going to conquer. The current world was terrible for a lot of people. Layla’s new world-- _their_ new world-- would be safer, more equal, better run. All four of them would do whatever was necessary to make it work.

“At this point, you wouldn’t manage to touch her at all.” He made the words a warning rather than a threat.

Windy eyed him appraisingly. “And if I take you hostage?”

Zach was almost certain that she wasn’t really considering it. Even so, he bared his teeth in an unfriendly smile. “I don’t recommend it. Really don’t. Layla’ll probably let you go completely without that. You threaten any of us, and she won’t let you go, won’t even let you die.” He took a deep breath. “Partly because she’ll be pissed, but partly because we need to make an unsubtle point about consequences. It just doesn’t have to be you.”

No one knew, yet, who Layla was or what she could do. She was going to have to do a few showy and very public things in order to scare the shit out of anyone capable of recognizing a losing fight. Nothing random, nothing obviously undeserved, but all of it thoroughly terrible.

If Layla’d only wanted Sky High, she’d have left everything as it had been. She could have. Zach, Ethan, and Magenta would have let her. None of them particularly wanted to manage the larger world. They could. They would. They just didn’t feel any urgency to take on that much unrewarding work.

If Layla wanted it, though, Layla would have their full support, just as any of them would have had hers, and all three of them had been expecting her to move any time the last five or six years.

Zach didn’t think Windy needed any of that explained to her.

Windy nodded. She turned and looked at the sky beyond the edge of the island. “Barron was my friend.”

“Yeah,” Zach said because they’d all understood that part. “You could’ve gone solo or found a berth just about anywhere else, so it had to be that. You don’t mind the random violence, but you don’t need it the way he did.”

“You studied us a lot harder than we studied you.”

“We were fourteen,” Zach told her. “You studied us damned hard then. You just forgot the part about us growing up.”

Her shoulders shook, and it took him several seconds to realize that she was laughing.

“You still have choices,” Zach said almost a minute later. “I’m pretty sure that Layla’s already done the only thing that’s really going to upset you.” It was a lie because once she figured out what was going on with Warren, Windy was probably going to want to rescue him. Zach wondered if there was any way to make Windy understand that Warren couldn’t be rescued.

Didn’t even want to be.

“How long has Warren known this was coming? Murdering his father, I mean.”

Zach hesitated. “Warren’s real good at compartmentalizing. I think… He had to have guessed by a year in that she _could_ kill.”

Warren had probably guessed before Windy and Zach had ever met. Warren was crazy, but he’d never been stupid about anything but keeping the four of them to begin with. Even that hadn’t been, not completely. Warren had thought it through.

But if Layla’d actually been powerless-- Well, if she had been, Magenta’d have killed Warren, and the four of them would have gotten a bus off the island. Magenta simply wouldn’t have told them about the babies.

So, yeah. Keeping them had always been going to backfire. Warren just thought that twelve years was more good time than he’d have gotten otherwise.

Knowing that Warren might have been right made Zach’s heart break a little. Not enough to save Warren, but it was still sad.

“I don’t think he let it surface-- the knowing she could kill easily and at a distance-- until after his mother’s funeral because he really, really wanted her dead but wasn’t-- Sylvia told him to protect her and keep her safe and adore her. Told him to obey her, too.” Zach shrugged. “All of that, and most people wouldn’t have been able to function as well as he did. He just had to break his mind to do it.”

Zach took a couple of steps away from Windy. “He didn’t keep us because we had power or because he thought any of us might be anything more than pets. He kept us because he could convince himself-- even knowing he was wrong-- that us being sidekicks meant us being helpless. He was--” Zach shook his head. There were a lot of words to describe Warren as he had been in October of 2005. “Lonely. He really was.” 

Windy was sharp and good with people. She had to have known at least some of this already, but neither she nor Zach had ever said it. Zach had talked about it, privately, with Ethan, Magenta, and Layla. He suspected Windy had talked about it with Warren’s father.

Zach saying it to Windy was a lot like not keeping the secret any more. She wasn’t staying. She’d never lived it. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t repeat it, but he didn’t have a way to force her to be smart if she decided she was up to fighting Layla. Windy wasn’t a stranger, but she’d never been on the inside at Sky High. She’d never tried to be Zach’s friend or Zach’s mentor, but they’d been-- coworkers might be the right word for it-- for twelve years.

Zach took a deep breath and made himself focus as he realized that he was trying to avoid thinking about December 2005. “When we almost escaped, he knew we had teeth, and that made it better. For him, not for us. He just couldn’t keep us, even then, if he admitted we were dangerous-- not to him and especially not to his mother-- and he wanted us very badly, so he had to not know, and you had to not know. He’s less crazy than he was, but… At fifteen, he was…”

Warren had been a long way past crazy.

“I was afraid that killing her would set off bombs in people’s heads.” Windy’s words were soft enough that Zach almost couldn’t hear them.

“If it hadn’t been an accident,” Zach said. He didn’t think he needed to finish the thought. He also didn’t think he needed to tell Windy that he could think of four ways to use her powers to have killed Sylvia in ways that might be taken for accidents.

“Yeah. It took years for anyone to start thinking it wasn’t.”

“It was a relief for everyone.” Zach had hoped she’d be honest enough to admit it. He didn’t say anything for almost thirty seconds. Then he sighed. “Warren saw Layla coming, eventually. He decided not to try to stop her. He chose that. He had a decade after his mother died to come up with an angle.” Zach shook his head. “Layla’s… If you want to hide from her, you’ll have to be invisible. The earth is hers. Most of the air is, too. Anything living or that used to be.”

Her shoulders tightened then relaxed. “That’s pretty god-damned powerful.”

“Warren realized years ago-- before you and I ever met-- that she was stronger than he’ll ever be, and that was when he thought all she had was plants.” He managed a small laugh. “She was most of the way to mold, mildew, and fungus by the time we tried to escape. We had months in that hole after that; what else was she going to do? Magenta called it sprouting through concrete.”

“Why wait this long?” 

Zach allowed himself a sigh. “Because she-- _we_ \--would have been a horror if she’d cracked the shell at fourteen. People are still going to die-- and worse-- but she’ll keep on being Layla Williams.” He was pretty sure that Windy wouldn’t understand not wanting to be a monster and absolutely sure that Windy wouldn’t understand the difference between becoming a monster and becoming a principled monster. “Magenta, Ethan, and I are ready to stand beside her now instead of behind, and that matters too. Also--” He hesitated.

Windy turned to study his face.

Zach met her eyes and held them. He raised one arm and unbuttoned the cuff of his sleeve. He pushed the cloth down to show his now unblemished skin.

Windy’s inhalation hissed through her teeth. “She healed you?”

Zach smiled. “She gave me the ability to do it myself, copied the things about Ethan that let him do it and put them into my cells. Mine and Magenta’s and her own.”

Layla said that giving Magenta healing was hardest because her shapeshifting and Ethan’s were so very different. Layla had used being able to do that as a signal to herself that she was ready.

Windy nodded as if that made other things make sense, but she now looked actually frightened. “Why didn’t she just kill all of us at the same time?”

“Maureen,” Zach said. He’d thought that part of it would be obvious. “She’s seven, and we didn’t want her to-- We’re more her parents than Barron Battle and Gwen Grayson ever were. We’re not that kind of abusive assholes, not for any of the kids.” He had to take a few deep breaths because he was actually angry that Windy would think they would do that. “Warren would have liked his father to survive, but he wanted himself to survive more, so he made himself not know it was coming. Maureen-- Ideally, she won’t ever know.” He made his expression as unyielding as he could.

Maureen wasn’t the youngest child on the island, but she was the youngest of those Zach had held as a baby and to whom he was a foster parent. Zach and his friends would destroy the world for her as much as they would for the twenty four older ones. They’d even give Warren back his powers and let him help.

Windy started to laugh.

Zach thought he heard grief in it. He intended to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

After several minutes, she said, “At least you weren’t being stupid when you followed me. I wondered.”

“I can’t give you a bus,” Zach said, “but I can take you up in one, far enough that you can fly properly.”

Windy might understand that she wouldn’t survive long if she beat the shit out of Zach, now, and let it go if he hinted that she couldn’t actually fly, but Zach didn’t see anything to be gained by making her give up that bit of pride. Gliding was close enough to flying anyway.

“I’ll do that much for you not having hurt me when you could have,” he went on. “Once you land, it’s up to you not to piss us off. I’m pretty sure Layla wouldn’t mind playing Sycorax to your Ariel.”

Windy frowned at him.

“Witch who sealed a wind spirit into a tree. You’d be alive in there until someone came along with enough power to let you out.”

She looked thoroughly horrified, so Zach thought she understood.

He shrugged. “It’s up to you. You don’t have to leave immediately. You can wait and go with the others after the funeral. Some of them won’t last long, not unless you can leash them, but all of them will go groundside again. We don’t want any of the kids to see that sort of shit.”

“Will that protect Warren?”

Zach could barely hear the question. He hesitated and then realized that his hesitation was a damned clear answer. “As much as it ever protected the four of us,” he said at last. “He told us at Homecoming that it was this, Royal Pain, or a bullet. We get the Pacifier, and he can have that as an option. I’m pretty sure he won’t want it, not even knowing we’re better parents than Sylvia Peace and Barron Battle.” Zach thought that a dead tree about to fall on a kid would be a better parent than Sylvia Peace. His opinions of Barron Battle as a parent were more complicated. “I don’t think any of us can offer him a bullet.”

Warren would prefer a bullet because his fear of being haunted by shadows of memory went deeper than anything else. Zach didn’t think Windy needed to be reminded of that.

“Do you _want_ the Pacifier?” There was a sharpness in Windy’s voice that hadn’t been there before.

Zach considered. “It’s a lot like killing people except that, sometimes, you get a different and worthwhile person years later. Kids are a hell of a lot of work.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “I’d rather find foster parents than dig graves.”

“I can get you the Pacifier.” It wasn’t quite an offer.

“It would be a help.” Zach didn’t want to make promises. “We could do business.”

“And what would I get?”

Zach had already told her that she could leave if she wanted to, so he suspected that he knew what Windy would demand for the Pacifier. “The only thing we have that you want is Warren, and you don’t really want him. As he is now, he’d fight you, and he’s crazy enough to knife you and come back here. I don’t see you wanting a baby.” 

Windy nodded as if she understood. Maybe she even did.

There was no way in hell that any of them would let Windy have Warren, especially not baby Warren.

Zach took a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t leave even if we said he could. He wants us and this place. Even on our terms. He might wear down, but he’s always wanted his mind to survive. Taking that and not giving him a choice would be pretty damned shitty.”

But it would solve a problem that Zach was expecting to poison the four of them. Torturing Warren was-- Zach hated himself for enjoying it. He just wasn’t going to stop. He couldn’t. He didn’t have that any more.

Magenta was still the most hands-off. She’d fuck Warren now that doing it wasn’t giving him anything more of herself, now that it could be her taking, instead. She hadn’t made a move to protect him, but she also hadn’t bothered to hurt him personally. She just watched-- and enjoyed watching-- while the others hurt him.

Warren was thrilled that Magenta would give him that much. He knew he was only getting scraps, but she’d touch him and let him touch her now.

Ethan wanted Warren to understand, viscerally, what being helpless meant. Ethan had reached the point of being fairly sure that Warren wouldn’t burn them for guessing wrong about what he wanted, but Ethan had never stopped being afraid because he’d never forgotten that Warren could change his mind.

Warren accepted now that he’d never be allowed to forget that Ethan could hurt him. Warren could certainly see the calculation in Ethan’s capriciousness. That was the price of Ethan not ignoring him altogether.

Zach knew that he, himself, was cruelest because, when he and Warren were private, away from the others, Zach attacked Warren’s mind. Warren had walls in his head that protected him from everything that terrified him and from everything that he knew that contradicted the things he was supposed to believe.

Warren had taken those from Zach, and Zach planned to spend a long time returning the favor. Warren had so many more lies in his head and so much more awareness that they were lies that Zach almost could have done it without drugs.

But drugs scared Warren more because he couldn’t pretend that any bit of that time was under his own control. During those hours, Zach was all that Warren had to anchor himself.

Warren had to know that the others knew. He had to know that they were already choosing not to intervene.

Layla kept testing to see how far she could push Warren, physically, before he started begging her to stop. Zach thought that he and Ethan and Magenta all found Warren that helpless and Layla that cruel arousing, both beautiful and terrifying. Warren didn’t like pain, but he adored Layla.

Warren actually wanted Layla to be powerful. He wanted Zach and Ethan and Magenta to be powerful, too. He just wanted to be standing next to them. He wouldn’t get that, but he might get enough to satisfy him.

Warren still wanted them to love him. Being a beloved fucktoy was better than being alone, no matter what pain came with it.

Layla called it the no-fat, no-calories, no-flavor version of love.

Zach thought that Warren hadn’t ever had anything else. Except maybe from the kids when they were still really small.

“You didn’t have to kill Barron.” Windy side-stepped Zach’s implied questions.

“We did. We really did.” Zach shook his head. “Sylvia left enough traps in Warren’s head that he’d have died trying to help his father. Barron Battle wouldn’t bow and mean it. Warren will; his father… couldn’t. He also… If Layla just took his power--” He heard a sharp inhalation that told him that Windy hadn’t guessed that was on the table. “--someone else would kill him.”

Her shoulders sagged a little, so Zach thought she understood both that their evaluation of Battle wasn’t wrong and that Zach wasn’t bluffing about taking powers.

Taking them went hand in hand with giving them, and Zach’s arms were proof that Layla could do that.

So was the fact that Warren hadn’t put out so much as a spark since his father died.

“We didn’t know him as well as you did, but we knew him pretty damned well.” Zach made the words hard. He turned away. “I just wanted you to know that you’re not safer off the island and that-- If we wanted you dead, too, you’d have passed out on the bus coming here so that you couldn’t stop the bomb killing everyone on board in midair. That would have kept Maureen from guessing, too. For long enough. She loves the four of us more than she does anyone who doesn’t live here.”

Maureen’s love for her older brother was going to be a problem someday. All of them knew that. The other kids were fond of Warren, but it wasn’t anything like the same sort of problem.

Ethan had been very careful about maneuvering Warren so that he was more of a fun, gift giving and game playing uncle than a parent to the Homecoming kids. Warren hadn’t noticed that the affection was more distant on their side than on his. He would have noticed with Maureen because he knew how Zach and Ethan felt about their sisters.

Zach didn’t look at Windy as he added, “I didn’t think anyone else needed to die today. It would have given us an excuse to go to war, though. Looking for the culprit, I mean. Ethan and Magenta both pointed that out, and--” He hesitated and tried to decide whether or not she already understood why Barron Battle had become a barrier to them after years of being a protection.

She had to understand that part.

“It would have been sound strategy,” he finished. “It would keep everyone looking at Warren as the main threat, too.”

Zach had said that it would be a criminal waste of a flying bus. He’d then added that he didn’t want to start by murdering anyone who didn’t absolutely have to die. He’d been right in guessing that Layla would understand. He’d been wrong in thinking that Ethan would be swayed.

Magenta had nodded and said, “We begin as we mean to go on,” which left Ethan as the only advocate for the more efficient approach.

Windy didn’t say anything.

“We’ll do a hell of a better job running things than the rest of the assholes downside.” Zach closed his eyes for a moment. “Let me know if you do want a bus. Get me the Pacifier if you can, and we’ll-- Maybe we’ll be parents to some kid who isn’t Warren Battle. I could do that much.” He wasn’t sure he would. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t.

He wasn’t sure he could let Warren go.

He hoped Layla wasn’t listening right then. She wouldn’t stop him. She wouldn’t tell Magenta or Ethan or Warren. She’d just understand it as him not trusting the four of them with the power they had and intended to have. 

The power they were already misusing.

Warren was a very particular edge case. Even Ethan couldn’t quite manage forgiveness for him, and Layla felt no guilt about causing Warren pain. This might not be a slippery slope-- arguments relying on that idea tended to be bullshit-- but Layla’s fifth murder had been as emotionally difficult for her as chopping a zucchini was for Zach. 

Which was to say that she’d mostly been concerned about managing the technical aspects, not because they were hard but because they weren’t particularly. If she sliced a finger, it would be her being careless. The zucchini wouldn’t be responsible because it was only a zucchini.

Nobody needed to have moral or ethical qualms about doing anything to a zucchini, but even Sylvia Peace had been human.

All four of them would be better people without the temptation of Warren, and Zach was pretty sure he couldn’t kill Warren. Not because he wouldn’t kill— he would; he could; he had— but because Layla’d given Warren the ability to heal specifically so that he wouldn’t die if one of them misjudged.

Layla didn’t want to give Warren up, either.

There were ways to kill people with that sort of healing. Zach just didn’t know them, and Warren didn’t want to die, so he wouldn’t offer any tips.

Warren had never wanted to die. He’d fought bitterly for every scrap of self he possessed. Using the Pacifier on him… The resulting child would be happier and saner than Warren ever had been, but he absolutely wouldn’t be Warren. Warren would know all of that and reject it as an option, so Zach wouldn’t let him know that it might happen. Zach had that much compassion in him.

“I need something firmer than that,” Windy said.

“I can’t give you that,” Zach told her as he wondered how hard it would be to persuade Gwen to give the Pacifier to them directly.

Gwen would probably destroy it first.

“Warren is…” Zach choked a little his next words. “He burned out all the compassion we might have had for him a long time ago.” Zach rubbed his now unscarred left wrist. The scar being gone didn’t mean he’d forgotten the pain. “He wanted us to orbit him, and we did. Just-- The gravity goes the other way now, and we hold him.”

“He’s still got you by the short curlies.” Windy’s smile was bleak and crooked.

“If he didn’t still want us, even on these terms, Warren would be dead already.” Zach couldn’t muster an answering smile. “If he hadn’t made us--” ‘Love’ was entirely the wrong word for how any of them felt about Warren, but Zach didn’t have anything better. “I’m not promising anything I’m not sure I can make myself do, and I… might not be able to. I think he-- all of you-- took that.”

Windy might have tried to say more, but Zach didn’t look back as he walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> At some point, earlier in writing this series, I realized that one of my questions was just how frightening Layla, Ethan, Magenta, and Zach were going to be in the darker branch(es) and in the long run. They clearly could become terrifying, and Homecoming happened a point when they weren't completely formed as people.
> 
> For Iddy Iddy Bang Bang 2018, I'm working on a set of chapters about what they're all doing with/to Warren. I wrote this to go with those and then realized that it (a) didn't fit and (b) didn't need all that much detail about those events to work, so I'm calling it a separate story. When I post that story, it will have a lot of character development stuff, but plotwise, it's all heading for the stuff in here and so skippable if explicit noncon isn't of interest but the series in general is.
> 
> I think this is a worse outcome for Warren than the one in "Intent on its Angles" because, at least then, the people holding him captive wanted to be good people and that would almost inevitably end up including helping him. I'm just not sure if _Warren_ sees it as a worse outcome.


End file.
